Day 1. Gun-totting!

My pockets are empty and I need some cash, so I walk many kilometers looking for a Barclays ATM. We finally locate one at Garden City. I’m rummaging through my wallet looking for my card when I look up and see a gangster with a shiny shotgun at the ATM. I freeze. But he beckons me to approach and remove money. Next to him is this guy who looks upset. He looks like he’s fallen victim to this thug and seems to be pleading for something. The guy notices me and gives me the try-your-luck look. I’m sweating. My hands are trembling. Needless to say I key in the wrong PIN and my card is vomited out. The thug eyes me. The other guy says, “you see”.

“Ssebo, maybe you need to relax.”

Oh great, now he also knows I’m nervous. It’s at this time that I look at him and notice his clothes. I burst out laughing. Nervously, of course. He’s not a thug. It’s a watchie with some faded uniform, but HE HAS A SHOTGUN!

Dudes, I have never seen so many guns in my freaking life. Jeez. Even in the cop station I never saw that many guns. Every watchie on ever corner, at every shop, at every petrol station and even duka, has a gun.

WA! I’m Kenyan and just those cops who accompany Wells Fargo with G3s freak me out. Now imagine my trauma. And these guys don’t have cheap-arse bulky G3s. A-AAH!

I recover and with a half-trembling hand and with half my jicho on this ‘watchie’ I successfully manage to secure a large amount of money…(pause, you’re in UG dude) Okay so it’s just a large number but the value is a twenty-fifth of that. Hesabu was ngumu and fractions split my head. So it’s like five minutes before I understand that I’m holding an equivalent of, one-two-three-FOUR ngwanye in Kenya money. Meaning I can stop my multi-millionaire swagger.

I get into the mots mortified and my pal quickly tells me that today, we are heading for paintball. Paint-who?

(pause again I’m shaggz material kiasi, therefore, fathoming what paintball is is hard. In fact, impossible, coz I have no idea whatthe crap he’s taking to)

All I get is that it involves ‘shooting’. More guns. Aw, man. These Ugandans have a fetish for guns. And the Ugandans we are with assure me that they do this for team-building. Ha!

But I’m easy and I’m down for whatever.

Now paintball is one of the best games you can ever play. In the beginning I was dharaoing the game. Some guy is telling us how he still has bruises from his last outing here. And I’m thinking. Wimp! Surely some small balls that look like, but don’t taste like, ball gums can’t be that painful.

However, I start getting worried when the guys running the show make us sign disclaimers releasing the-place-I-can’t-remember-its-name from any responsibility if we get injured or die.

DIE? Now hold on one dang minute. We’re going to die? Rather we could die? Bana, what game is this? The dudes laugh and assure me no such thing will ever happen. But injured we will be. Especially, if at any one time you remove your mask. Or if the opponent get you from a distance of less than five feet. I’m staying well away from y’all.

Before we start the game we are kitted like the SWAT team. Overalls, that are really short my ankles are sticking out like a stray dog’s willies. Gas masks, okay, masks lakini they look like gas masks, and as sure as hell am having trouble breathing…PANT. PANT. We also get these cool gloves and caps that are definitely not from the latest line of Milan. Maybe the garbage summer collection. Finally, we are hooked up with ‘bullet proof’ vests. Who’s the bad guy now?

“So where are the sissy guns?’

I’m eager to get blasting. This sounds easy anyway. We walk into a netted area filled with obstacles from tires, to crates to…what the crap is that? The guys tells us the rules, yada yada blah blah…MY GUN?

He unleashes the guns. Damn! COOL! He loads them with the paint pellets that burst on impact…bullets, man, bullets. Pellets are for chicks. He grabs one gun and tests it.

BANG!

This is followed by deathly silence. The silence found uniquely at the war cemetery…just minus the mathrees.

We all along had thought these guns are cheap stuff, kumbe…MAN, THESE ARE REAL GUNS! Shortly I start panicking. Maybe, enyewe, kuna vile tunaweza dedi. We split into two teams of four and the basic idea is to capture, without getting shot, the opponents flag. Right now, that word ‘shot’ is scaring me shitless. Can’t he use a safe word like ‘pelleted’? Anything above the waist, you’re dead and out of the game.

When we get onto the course proper and the ‘ref’ blows the whistle to start us off, I’m so tense and breathing heavily I manage to steam my ‘gas mask’ in two seconds flat. I can’t see jack, and right now where I’m hiding jack can’t see me either.

BANG! BANG! Go my teammates. BANG! BANG! Return the opponents.

Okay, I can do this. I peep round a tire…BANG! WHIZZ! I duck again. Oh my goodness, they want to kill me.

Come on Modoathii, you didn’t bring your sorry arse all the way to Uganda to hide it behind some worn-out Firestone.

YAAAAAAAAA! BANG! BANG! BANG! (x30)

I get up like Rambo and Schwarznegar (sp) combined and start firing like crazy. Well of course I hit no one coz first I can’t see and two the direction I’m pointing my gun will ‘kill’ nothing but a few molecules of air.

I duck behind other tires. I’m feeling great. I’ve finally broken out of my shell.

YAAAAAAA! BANG! BANG! WHISTLE!

Damn. Game 1 is over. So soon? Who won? Both sides claim victory. But apparently, the flags are still where they initially were. It’s happy chatter as we all troop back to the safety zone. Guys are excited, every one is talking about how they shot sijui who, who’s butt was exposed. Another is asking who shot him in the head. Man, it’s excitement all round. And I can’t wait to go back for game 2 up to 5.

We swap teams and the action is relived again. This time I do blast a few negroes and I do get blasted. But so far so good. No injury.

In the end, our team wins, because otero wowowo…that’s me, managed to secure the flag twice without getting shot by a ball gum. Okay, I did get shot once. Okay, twice…you insist, five times. But no injuries. Phew!

We leave the netted area and head for the chilling area happy like little children while sweating like horses underwater. After we strip we are given the next best thing to a cold tanye (tusker), vodoski for me. A towel dipped in ice cold water. My oh my. That’s sweet. After cooling down we settle to beers.

Something I never told you about Ugandans, they love pinting. Well, at least the crowd I was with. Every waking hour is all about drinking beer. Amka in the morning, beer. Take a walk to a…beer joint. Wash our cars while we…drink. It’s no wonder that one of us was almost hospitalized coz he had no water in his system, just alcohol. Si you know with alcohol what goes in must come out, so, do your math, he was dehydrated.

He’s given medicine, and what does he do, he teremshas it with, yes, a beer.

That was day one in Uganda. I had a blast (hehe) and it was the day I saw the highest number of weapons in my entire life. Na bado. And from that day on, after the paintball, I have much respect for our army brothers. During the game, we were ducking and rolling around like stiff commandos trying to avoid getting hit by pellets that only leave scars for at most one week (or one year depending), but in combat it’s real bullets, real death, real bloody injury. Msee.

The tour continues…